| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(Letter to a Bahai)
by Constance Woods
You claim that the Bahais accept everything in the New Testament, only they interpret it differently than Christians do. A major difference would be your understanding of the Resurrection as a “spiritual resurrection.” I tried to show you in a previous letter that the same Church which gave us the New Testament naturally has authority over how those writings are interpreted. It is impossible that the Church would select as its sacred Scripture writings which directly contradict the central proclamation of the Church’s own teaching. I said that your reasoning was circular and you said that my reasoning appeared circular to you. You said that is probably just the way it is: the other person’s arguments will always look circular if you don’t agree with them.
I would like to take the time now to explain in more detail exactly how your reasoning is circular (Part One), and then to show that the Church’s teaching is not circular, but is an unbroken chain transmitting the evidence of the original eyewitnesses (Part Two). In the end, you can accept or reject the Christian proclamation, but you cannot say you accept it while making it into something other than what it has always claimed for itself. Finally, in Part Three I will show how the doctrines of the Ascension and the Second Coming are related to the doctrine of the bodily Resurrection, and in conclusion will look at how the oldest heresies differ from the modern heresies that reject the Christian proclamation.
The Bahais are not alone in interpreting the events of Easter week as a symbol of spiritual resurrection. The earliest heretics had similar ideas. The Modernists, too, theorize that the Gospel narratives are symbolic depictions of some intense inner conviction the apostles experienced, but not an actual historical record of the bodily Resurrection of Jesus. So you are in good company but so, fortunately, am I. The Fathers of the Church, in contending with the Gnostic heresy, long ago defeated the idea of a spiritual resurrection, and their arguments are equally effective today. Most importantly, the writings of the Fathers show what the Church has always understood the Resurrection to be. I will summarize some of their arguments in Part Two. But first I want to take your own ideas about the spiritual resurrection and hold them up to the light of Scripture, since you claim to accept the same Scripture.
Part One
Symbolism Signifying Nothing
When I pointed out to you that the soul is already immortal and asked you what, in that case, could be the meaning of a spiritual resurrection, you gave a very vague answer. You said it could mean either the resurrection of Jesus’ teachings or a resurrection of the apostles’ faith in Him. Like the Modernists, you perhaps think the apostles experienced some intense interior conversion or transformation, which was described in the Gospels using the symbolism of resurrection. So which is it? A revival of Jesus’ teachings or an awakening of the apostles’ faith? They are related, I suppose, as the revival of the apostles’ faith or their intense interior conviction would have Jesus’ teaching as its object. At any rate, I will demonstrate why both these ideas are circular.
Even if you don’t accept Jesus’ Resurrection as a bodily resurrection, you have to agree that it is the central event in the New Testament and in all of history. We count our years from the birth of Christ, but without Easter there would have been no understanding of the Incarnation, no Christianity. You may use a different, parallel calendar for private liturgical purposes in some other religion, but all your days are still ordered by the Christian calendar. The whole world is oriented to the Resurrection, because the Resurrection truly cut history in two and began a new era. This event is manifestly the center of human history, but what is the nature of this event?
If the apostles suddenly had some experience whereby their faith in Jesus’ teachings was renewed, what was this experience and when did it happen? This earth-shattering event took place when they blank and realized that blank. Fill in the blanks. We can only fill them in with guesses because, according to the spiritual resurrection theory, the Gospels do not record an actual historical event, but merely symbolize something. The Easter story, you say, is symbolic. But symbolism has to be a symbol of something. It symbolizes whatever really did happen. But what really did happen? That’s where we’re stuck. What is all this a symbol of?
Since there is no record of what actually happened, according to your theory, how on earth can you distinguish a true interpretation of the symbolism from an erroneous interpretation? The Resurrection could be a symbol of Jesus’ spirit living forever (which spirits do anyway). It could be a symbol of His teaching. (Would that include His teaching that He was to rise from the dead in three days? Would that include His teaching that He is God? But these are teachings you do not accept!) It could be a symbol of the renewed faith of the apostles. But it could just as easily be a symbol of anything I want, the discovery of Neptune for instance. Symbols that are not anchored to anything literal become nothing more than tea leaves for fortune-tellers to read. Why is your interpretation more valid than anyone else’s interpretation? Here we have what is demonstrably the central event in world history, and yet you are unable to tell me what this event is.
Try to imagine that Jesus had come to life again, and had appeared in the flesh to the witnesses He had chosen beforehand. Ask yourself a hypothetical question. If there were a bodily Resurrection, how might the apostles have described this event? If the story they tell about the empty tomb, the grave clothes, the wounds in Jesus’ side, Jesus eating fish, Jesus on the shore making a charcoal fire and sharing breakfast with the apostles—in other words, the whole Easter narrative—if all that is a symbol of the apostles’ renewed faith in him, then how might a bodily resurrection be described? What different words could the evangelists have chosen? The “spiritual resurrection” you suppose they were talking about is described with such an emphasis on the body, that one wonders what they could have said differently if they really were talking about His body?
Circular Reasoning
Not only does “spiritual resurrection” not have any meaning, the very idea is based on circular reasoning. Let’s say it means the first alternative you proposed, namely, that Jesus’ teaching was resurrected. Okay, what does that mean? That the apostles rejected His teaching and later accepted it again? That they didn’t understand it and later understood it? You could certainly find instances of both in scripture. When Jesus makes the first prediction of His Passion to the apostles (Mark 8:31-33), Peter reproaches Jesus for saying such a thing, but Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter refused to believe that the Messiah must die, and he did not grasp that the Messiah would rise again. In spite of the “suffering servant” prophecies of Isaiah, it was simply not conceivable to the Jewish mind that the Messiah would die, much less die an ignominious death. Peter does not grasp the next part of Jesus’ prediction at all, that He will rise again three days after being killed. Peter did not understand the prophecies of the Messiah’s death and resurrection until after the Resurrection. So you cannot define the Resurrection as his new understanding of Jesus’ teaching, because it was the Resurrection itself that precipitated this new understanding.
The same holds true for other instances when the apostles could not understand what Jesus meant until after the Resurrection.
-
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken (John 2:19-22).
All of a sudden, at some point in history, there was a spiritual resurrection, you say. The apostles began a life of preaching, and what they are preaching is a resurrection. There was no activity, then there was great activity. What prompted it? If you say it was their faith that was resurrected, we also have a circular argument. Faith in what? What are they preaching about that they have such strong faith in? The Resurrection. But if Resurrection means their faith, then you are saying that this tremendous burst of preaching and martyrdom came about because of the apostles’ renewed faith which was prompted by their renewed faith. You may say, along with the Modernists, that they had some profound inner experience of Jesus. But what was that inner experience? We are back to nowhere. There is no content to that “inner experience.” No one can say what it was.
The very earliest speeches and sermons of the apostles recorded in the New Testament show that the event they are talking about which has prompted them to go out and preach is the Resurrection. The main elements recurring in all the early preaching of the Church are:
- Jesus was crucified but God raised Him from the dead.
- We are the witnesses to that.
- His death and resurrection were part of God’s plan for Israel and all mankind as foretold by all the prophets from Moses onward.
- His death and resurrection bring forgiveness of sins to those who accept this message and repent and are baptized. This is the only means of salvation.
- Some of the earliest speeches recorded in Acts also proclaim Jesus’ Ascension and the fact that He is the Judge of the living and the dead.
We have enough early speeches recorded to see that this recurring pattern is the original Christian message. The Resurrection is what they are proclaiming. To say the Resurrection as they are describing it symbolizes something else leaves us with the absurd proposition that not one single time, in all their preaching, did the apostles mention the real content of their message. If their real message was that they now understood and accepted Jesus’ teaching, why did they never say what Jesus’ teaching was? Why aren’t the apostles explaining the Sermon the Mount? Why aren’t they explaining Jesus’ teaching on divorce? Or His teaching about hell? Or His teaching about money? Or about loving your neighbor? If the teaching has been resurrected, why is there no talk at all of His teaching?
Although there is no talk of His moral teaching yet, His teaching about Himself is, in fact, at the heart of the Christian proclamation. All His moral teaching was certainly important, but His most important teaching was the revelation of His own identity. After the Resurrection He explained all of (Hebrew) Scripture to His disciples in reference to Himself. He showed how all the law, the psalms, and the prophets related to Himself and to His death and Resurrection. Here is what He taught the two disciples who encountered Him on the road to Emmaus. It is Easter Sunday and the two do not yet recognize Him. They are still in shock because the one they had hoped was the Messiah has died.
-
And he said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scripture the things concerning himself (Luke 24:25-27).
-
And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:31-32).
You likewise have a tautology if you call the resurrection a symbol of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus’ teaching on Scripture is what makes their hearts burn within them—after the Resurrection. The teaching is only given to them and only understood by them after the Resurrection, so the Resurrection cannot mean their understanding of His teaching.
That same evening (Easter Sunday) the disciples returning from Emmaus go to the eleven apostles to tell them what has happened. The eleven greet them with the news: “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” (Luke 24:34). As they are speaking, Jesus appears among them. He shows them His wounded hands and feet so they will know it is not a spirit. He invites them to touch Him. He asks for some food and eats a fish. Jesus does all this to prove it is His real body, and not any kind of phantom body or symbolic body or illusion or vision or psychic experience.
Interestingly, even after Jesus had already appeared to Peter and to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, they did not yet understand the nature of His presence. They were already saying among themselves that the Lord has risen, yet they were nonetheless so stunned when Jesus appeared among them that they supposed He might be a ghost or spirit. They had not yet grasped the bodily nature of the Resurrection. Because they did not fully comprehend that this was Jesus’ real body, and really the same Person and the same body they had just buried, Jesus invites them to touch His wounds and asks them for something to eat. He is demonstrating to them that His body is real, because He knows their doubts. He is clarifying their understanding of what has just happened, namely, the Resurrection.
A New Teaching
Then, as soon as He has given these proofs of His bodily resurrection, Jesus begins to teach the apostles. “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). Before His Passion He had told them that all of Scripture must be fulfilled, and now He teaches them how it is fulfilled. He gives them a guided tour of all Scripture. He unveils its meaning for them, teaching them how it relates to His own identity and giving them an understanding of Scripture they never had before, though they read it every Sabbath in their synagogues (see Acts 13:27).
Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:45-49).
I have italicized Jesus’ statement because that is what becomes the core of all early Christian preaching. It could even be called the outline of the Christian proclamation. These post-Resurrection teachings are the exact elements that make up the content of the earliest preaching of Peter and Paul, as recorded in the book of Acts: Jesus was crucified and died but God raised Him from the dead; in this event the prophecies of scripture are fulfilled, and we are witnesses to this event. Anyone who repents and is baptized will receive forgiveness of sins in His Name.
Interestingly, other major teachings of Jesus do not appear in the earliest speeches of the Church. Rather, the public proclamation consisted precisely in those teachings and commands the apostles had been given privately for forty days after the Resurrection, when Jesus showed them the bodily nature of His Resurrection, when He interpreted all of Scripture in relation to Himself, when He taught them about the kingdom of heaven (Acts 1:3), when He gave them the power to forgive sins (John 20:21-23), when He commanded then to baptize and to preach forgiveness of sins in His Name to all nations (Matthew 28:19). As soon as they were “clothed with power from on high” and received the promised Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the apostles began to preach the new teaching of the Risen Jesus.
Therefore the Resurrection cannot be some kind of symbolic language for their renewed understanding of the teachings of Jesus, because the disciples received the teaching that became the core of the Christian faith only after the Resurrection. And the Resurrection cannot be a symbol of their faith because their faith is in the bodily Resurrection.
The First Link in the Chain
The idea of a spiritual resurrection, then, is circular. By contrast, the Christian teaching about the Resurrection is transmitted from the original apostles down to us in an unbroken chain. The first link in the chain is the preaching of the Apostles. Variations on the same core elements we have just enumerated can be found in all the preaching of Peter and Paul. In the first sermon of the Church, delivered by Peter on Pentecost (Acts 2:14-40), Peter announces that what they are witnessing is a fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel, through whom God said that in the last days His Spirit would be poured out on all flesh. Joel’s prophecy ends “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Although His hearers are culpable as a nation for Jesus’ death (you crucified Him through the hands of others, Peter says), Jesus’ death was nonetheless foreknown and ordained by God. It is the center of God’s plan for mankind’s salvation: “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”
Peter shows the Resurrection of Jesus to be the fulfillment of David’s Messianic prophecy in Psalm 16: “Moreover my flesh will dwell in hope, for thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption.” Peter’s explication of this psalm demonstrates that it cannot refer to David, for everyone knows that David’s body is still in the tomb. Therefore in this psalm David is speaking prophetically of the Messiah who will be descended from him. If Jesus were still dead, Peter’s argument would not work. He is saying that David’s body is lying in the grave corrupt, but Jesus is no longer in the grave, and His body is no longer subject to death. Peter is comparing bodies here, not spiritual experiences!
A constant part of the original message is that the apostles are witnesses to the resurrected Christ. Peter ends His explication of Psalm 16 by saying, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.” Peter also proclaims Jesus’ Ascension, showing how it fulfills the Messianic prophecy of Psalm 110. David did not ascend into heaven, so it is Jesus that the Lord is speaking to when he says, “Sit at my right hand till I make thy enemies a stool for thy foot.” Therefore this Jesus is both Lord and Messiah.
The proclamation of Jesus’ death and Resurrection leads to conversion and forgiveness in the Name of Jesus, through baptism.
-
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:37-38).
Peter’s next speech (Acts 4:5-12), on the day after he and John were arrested, follows the same pattern: you crucified Him, God raised Him from the dead, and it is all the fulfillment of prophecy. The prophecy Peter refers to this time is Psalm 118, which says the stone rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone. The Resurrection is inseparable from the offer of salvation: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
In Acts 10:34-43 Peter baptizes the first Gentile, Cornelius, and gives a sermon to the Gentiles. Peter summarizes Jesus’ preaching and healing in Galilee and Judea. This summary again leads up to the central event, the death and Resurrection: “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. But God raised him on the third day and made him manifest.” To stress the physical reality of the Resurrection, Peter adds that the apostles, His chosen witnesses, ate and drank with Jesus after the Resurrection. In this speech we also have the announcement that Jesus is the One who will judge all mankind. “And he commanded us to preach to the people, and to testify that he is the one ordained by God to be judge of the living and the dead.” All the prophets bear witness that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
In his speech in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:16), Paul reviews the whole history of Israel leading up to the death and Resurrection of Jesus as its climax. The death of Jesus is the event to which all the prophecies are pointing. Though we read these prophecies every Sabbath, Paul says, we did not understand them. Because the Jews did not understand them, they fulfilled those very prophecies by condemning Jesus. But God raised Him from the dead and for many days He appeared to people. The Resurrection is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel: “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus” (13:32-33). Paul cites specifically Psalm 2 and Psalm 16, giving Psalm 16 the same interpretation Peter did in his sermon on Pentecost: David’s body saw the corruption of death, but Jesus, because God raised Him from death, saw no corruption. Because of the Resurrection, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed through Jesus: “Let it be known to you therefore, brethren, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him every one that believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (13:38-39).
There is nothing in the early proclamations about Jesus as a great teacher of ethics, which is what He has been reduced to today by those who want to make Christianity a variation of all world religions. The consistent teaching of the apostles, a teaching which they received from Jesus Himself, is the identity of Jesus as the one foretold in all of Scripture. God raised Him from the dead and offers forgiveness to all who believe and are baptized. But what about those who do not believe? Paul immediately follows this good news with some bad news. He cites another interesting prophecy relating to those who will hear the proclamation of the Resurrection and deny it, deeming it impossible. “Behold, you scoffers, and wonder, and perish; for I do a deed in your days, a deed you will never believe, if one declares it to you” (Acts 13:41 quoting Habakkuk 1:5).
God is threatening death to those who do not believe the great deed He will do. Now if this great deed were the revival of the apostles’ faith, then Paul would be saying that those who do not believe in the apostles’ renewed faith are condemned, without, however, ever explaining what that renewed faith is. And how could this prophecy have any force if it were referring to some rediscovery of Jesus’ public teaching, which crowds of thousands listened to? How could that be the marvel that scoffers would not believe? It is precisely the bodily Resurrection that the scoffers do not believe.
Backtracking a little to the fourth chapter of Acts, we see that the content of the apostles’ message was not only the Resurrection of Jesus but also our own future resurrection in Jesus. The Sadducees and priests and captain of the temple arrested Peter and John “because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:1-2). Yet the general resurrection (the future resurrection of all the dead) was not an entirely new teaching among the Jews. The mother who watched all seven of her sons killed before her eyes during the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, about 165 years before Christ, encouraged them to martyrdom with her belief in the bodily resurrection:
-
I do not know how you came into being in my womb. It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourself for the sake of his laws (2 Maccabees 7:22-23).
Peter annoyed them accidentally, as it were, simply by the content of his proclamation, but Paul used this tactic quite deliberately to divide the Jewish leaders who had brought charges against him in the presence of the Roman tribune. He explains that they are putting him on trial merely for being a Pharisee, for believing what the Pharisees already believe, namely the resurrection of the dead.
-
But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead I am on trial.” And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducess; and the assembly was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. Then a great clamor arose; and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party stood up and contended, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn in pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them and bring him into the barracks (Acts 23:6-10).
We can look at Paul’s letters as well as his speeches to understand what he meant by the Resurrection. In the letter to the Romans he says: “If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will bring your mortal bodies to life also, through his Spirit dwelling in you” (Romans 8:9-11). Again he is saying that the source of our future resurrection is Christ’s Resurrection: because the Spirit brought Christ to life, we too will be raised from the dead if we have the same Spirit dwelling in us.
It seems the Holy Spirit saw to it that certain words got into the written text in order to prevent future misinterpretation. First of all, Paul does not merely say—although he could have—that we will also be raised from the dead like Christ. If he had said only that much, someone would be bound to come along and say that Paul means we will all have some spiritual awakening. Lest someone could possibly say Paul is talking about spiritual renewal and rather than bodies being raised from the dead, Paul explicitly says the Spirit will bring our bodies to life again. And lest someone could possibly dare to say that “bodies” is Paul’s way of saying exactly the opposite of what it sounds like, that “bodies” really means disembodied spirits, Paul puts in the word “mortal.” The Spirit will raise your mortal bodies to life, he says. That is, our bodies that are subject to death, our bodies that will in fact die, will also be raised to life. But what if you still assert that Paul meant the opposite of what his words mean, that he was not actually talking about mortal bodies, but about our spirits? How, then, would he have described the resurrection of our bodies if he had meant bodies?
Constance Woods is a wife and mother, holds a Ph.D. in Russian Literature, and a Masters from the Notre Dame Institute.